Katy Milkman

I'm going to schedule time for it.

So that's the lowest level of entrapment of yourself is sort of, now instead of a vague commitment to do this soon...

there's an explicit commitment.

Here's the time, here's the date.

And maybe I even told another human so that I'd feel some shame.

So now you're changing the cost benefit a little bit.

Now the cost of procrastination has just inched upward a little because now you've got shame involved.

And before you just had like this vague thing you'd put off.

So that's like a very low level way to entrap yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

For those of you who that's not enough, which is like maybe 97% of you, you can get more aggressive.

And by the way, the category of tool we're talking about here, like social scientists call it, we're talking about commitment devices.

The idea is you're used to having other people

create constraints to help you do a thing that you might not do otherwise.

Like, you're used to your boss being like, get this to me by Friday or else you're not going to get your bonus at the end of the year.

The world is full of others setting up systems that create incentives that align our long-term goals with what we do.

Um, what's weird about a commitment device is it's you preventing yourself from doing the thing that's tempting.

So it's like you're flipping it around.

You're like, you're your own teacher, your own boss, your own, uh, nanny state or whatever.

Okay.